by Knight, Dirk
Giant athletic men.
“We need to find out if he drove here, and if he came here alone. Get him over here for a few drinks. We can tell him that I’m your cousin from out of town, and that we want to go to an after party, or we need a ride home; something.”
“You’ve been thinking about this for a while, I guess,” she says with a lithographed smile emblazoned on her stone smooth face, and glances back to the stud horse longingly.
“I saw him checking me out earlier,” she says.
“You were probably doing the same.”
“He’s just so tall, how could I not look twice?”
It doesn’t take much for her to lure him over; a smile, an exchange of casual nods.
She holds up her cocktail and motions toward an empty stool.
Dennis buys the round, cash, and they all chat.
His name is Brandon. He plays football for ASU. He is a halfback.
“I rushed for such and such yards last season and got MVP,” he says.
“Blah, blah, fucking blah,” he says next.
He is far more interested in himself than in Libby, but still, he is not a fool and she is desirable. Plus she is throwing the pussy in his face; hard to ignore that once you’ve had a few.
Then Brandon says something to the bartender that sounded like “Oogah Boogah,” to Dennis, who looks away, after thinking the words spear chucker, to keep from laughing. Dennis knows that the footballer wasn’t really all too different from himself, and that he has no need to demean or belittle the man. Dennis knows, in fact, that the man is superior in almost every way. Everything about Brandon amplifies his own weaknesses; this is why he has to be a nigger or a coon, a moon cricket or a spook. He has to find some perceived societal flaw and exploit it, or else admit that he’s no better than the man across the island from him.
Intentionally slurring his words, and leaning into the bar, Dennis starts acting far more intoxicated than he is; all part of he and Libby’s carefully concocted ruse. This is her cue. Libby, looking to Dennis for reassurance, begins to flirt exorbitantly with him. She lets herself start touching him, first with fingertips tracing the hard lines of his muscles, then with her palms pressed firmly. First, his powerful arms, and then his flat stomach through his draping button-down shirt.
Silk.
Black guys are the only ones who can get away with wearing silk anymore.
Same with Ed Hardy. Black dudes and douche bags, but only one pulls it off.
Her body leans into his, quickly she is kissing him; her hand continues to travel his stomach to his waist and further until she finds his knotted bulge threatening the zipper and acid-washed denim and more than filling her hands.
Even douche bags won’t try to pull off the acid-washed jeans anymore.
“Holy shit; wow! Really?” she says, causing Dennis to both roll his eyes in disgust, and to become intrigued.
“Yeah, really,” he says.
This is when she asks him, “Do you want to get out of here?”
He slams the rest of his beer and says, “Hell yeah, girl, you know I do, but what about yo’ friend?”
“We can’t leave him here. He’s not from around here. Besides he’s prob’ly gonna pass out soon, anyway, just look at him. Let’s just bring him along, okay?”
Dennis is somewhat vexed by how intently she is enjoying this other man, but then there is the part of him that is a voyeur, and part of him that has always imagined the women he loves being enamored with other men. Bigger, stronger men. Men who can offer what he cannot, that sheer masculinity and sexual prowess.
Men who have never once thought about sucking a cock.
He imagines that many women are, contented by youth and not seeking financial or relational stability just yet, seeking the domineering male. Women only end up with a man like Dennis, or some other, nicer guy as a symbol of resignation or maturity; having had all the fun and taken all the chances they were going to for one lifetime—unless they were unlucky enough to have gotten knocked up and had to raise a little mulatto on a single income.
Libby isn’t old enough to have resigned, and certainly hasn’t grown up any. She remains confident and willing to risk rejection, or poverty, so she should seek out the alpha male.
He hates himself that he feels this is so . . . still.
It’s not that he always wanted women to cheat; it was that he had always known they were going to. You spend so long expecting your girl to suck a strange dick that when it finally happens you feel vindicated. And since you had accepted this girl as your partner however many months or years ago, with the knowledge that she was going to cheat, you don’t have to break it off; you got exactly what you expected and it was always okay. But they break up with you.
Why?
Because they want a guy to get jealous. They want a guy who will fight for them, who doesn’t want to share.
Party Girls always have double standards.
So, now you find a new girl and decide to skip the drama, the waiting, and the uncertainty, and you bring home a dude from the bar and have him plow your old lady.
She wants you to be jealous?
Punch her in the fucking throat. If you don’t wake up in jail the next day, rinse and repeat.
Since Dennis knows the women are going to cheat, it might as well be with someone so very different, better, that it was an obvious selection. It would be better for his woman to crave a ten-inch dick, than for him to walk in on her balling another pudgy white man with a five-inch pecker.
At that point, you would have to do some serious soul-searching. What the fuck is so wrong with me, that she had to find my doppelgänger?
He lets his jealousy and furies distill into something useful, and puts his possessive and obsessive tendencies aside.
The valet arrives with Brandon’s car next, and Dennis clumsily gets in the backseat of the football player’s Escalade.
“Of course it’s a fucking Escalade,” he mumbles, careful not to touch anything with his fingertips. His Isotoners are in his pockets; he finds them now.
The valet then closes the door behind Libby, and Brandon tries to tip the man, but the valet returns the tip with a smile, and shakes his hand. Presumably, this is due to his performance in some game from last season, because the valet says something about having made his rent on a key play.
Evidently, Brandon isn’t the only one who thinks Brandon is hot shit.
While Brandon is still pandering to his fan club of one, Libby looks past the headrest and smiles, her right hand gripping the leather; she asks, “You want to watch me this time don’t you? You’re getting off on this shit. It’s not enough that I just tell you about fucking black guys, you wanna see it. That’s fucking hot!” and she giggles. She giggles because these are the things Dennis has asked her to say, to heighten the moment for him. She knows as well as anyone why they are there and what’s in store.
His first thought is that she is leaving prints everywhere, but he doesn’t care. She will be gone before too long anyway, before the police can find her, but not tonight. This is entirely too much fucking fun to be legal, he thinks, struggling not to burst forth in laughter.
He leans forward and says, “Get him to pull over somewhere close. There are tons of closed businesses with empty parking; somewhere close, but secluded, and take him in your mouth. Do not let him turn you down, and no matter what, Libby, make him cum.”
She lets her breath catch and offers an, “Mmm hmm,” then settles into her seat, with her hands finding her snot locket, pressing the cotton of her pants into it to absorb the wetness.
“You’re one fucked up dude,” Jiménez shouts. “Ha-ha, me too; let’s get a better view for the show.”
Yet again, Dennis realizes that he is glad Jiménez is there. He leans forward and tilts the rearview mirror down, so he can avoid making eye contact with Brandon, and get a better view of his little innocent girl becoming a murdering whore.
Now, Dennis finds himself aroused. More aroused
than he was even when he was taking it from the little cunt that fought him on the roadside. He had drugged her, beaten and raped her, and she was too weak to scream or fight back when he was done—and Jiménez had watched and egged him on there too—but this was something better. More thrilling to watch this powerful God of a man be taken by a tiny young girl and then take from him all of his dreams (and those of his family).
In the blink of an eye everything he will have been, will be no more, and the last thing he will have done, will be to get blown by a beautiful but dangerous black widow.
Or white widow, maybe. He isn’t sure about the nomenclature just yet.
Brandon gets into the driver’s seat and the door slams home. Dennis feigns sleep and Libby plays her part like a Broadway veteran. They are stopped in just a few moments and Dennis begins to hear the noises he has been awaiting eagerly.
His mother was like this too, he thinks. She didn’t care about him. She had blown a boyfriend in a motel room while he was supposed to be sleeping in his sleeping bag on the floor. He could hear every wet sound and every grunt coming from the man that his mother had chosen for the weekend. Dennis had begged and thrown a tantrum to be able to come along; he never got to accompany her on any road trips, and now he could understand why.
Not only was Dennis not alone with his mother but other men had been in the room as well. He heard them copulating and was disgusted by the sound; but also angry and aroused in a weird childlike way. They had taken turns. Dennis humped his pillow like a dog would the leg of a stranger, but it had been his mother’s face he imagined in the downy ripples. He had been disgusted by his actions.
They’d joked about it in thinly veiled remarks at breakfast the next day. Dennis wouldn’t eat. He wouldn’t kiss his mother, either, after seeing the horrible asshole men she had let team her. He missed his father and wondered how long this had been going on before Harold Dean had known. Better yet, how long had Harold known and tolerated her before he had severed his life?
He recalls his mother getting dressed in front of him, wearing pantyhose and a bra. It made his pecker stand. He felt guilty about it, but it was the first time he had seen a woman nude in real life. It was simple biology.
Oedipus and his tiny fucking swollen prick.
Before then he had only seen a few airbrushed photographs of nude women. They were mythicized and seemed unattainable. Like something that wasn’t really real. Just a fantasy.
He was rummaging through Harold’s belongings one day . . . being a kid, when he stumbled upon a magazine. His father had obviously tucked it away to hide it from someone, making its contents even more desirable.
The cover was vulgar and elusive. The interior pages held images of the most beautiful angelic woman, breasts exposed, and a little patch of dark hair between her legs. He had been captivated, standing stone still, holding the magazine high, with the three-page fold out almost as tall as he was when his father had entered the room behind him.
Dennis dropped the magazine and jumped to attention, turning to meet his father and ready to lie away all the bad he’d done, but no discipline had followed. Harold said, “Well, you gotta learn somewhere,” and walked away, closing the door behind him. Dennis continued to massage his piss stick for a few moments, but was eerily creeped out knowing his father was privy to his private lesson.
Naturally, his mother, being the only real woman he’d seen, embodied this playmate effigy for him now.
She was supposed to belong to Dennis and to love him, but instead she had forced him to sleep on the floor of a shitty motel while a Ricky and a Salvatore had defiled his angelic mother.
The sound of Brandon’s excitement and imminent eruption ends his reveries, and Dennis opens his eyes to see Libby sliding his shadow stick into her mouth and moaning. Brandon flexes his hips and he fills her face, she gags. She can barely fit half in her jaw, which appears to be unhinged in order to accommodate his girth, like a Cottonmouth swallowing an ostrich egg.
Dennis feels the jealousy and helplessness wash over him like a wave of heroin.
Why don’t I have a rod like that? he wonders.
When Brandon climaxes in her mouth, Dennis waits until she is finished drinking it down and then he thrusts his hand forward with the pearl handled blade opened and honed, and in a single fluid motion, he separates Brandon’s mouth from his lungs.
And his future from reality. Blood gurgles out and down his shorn trachea, threatening to drown him before he can bleed out.
Libby watches intently, drinking in the tableau they have arranged.
Brandon starts to thrash around.
Dennis reaches to the seatbelt and pulls it down over his shoulders. He plants his feet into the back of Brandon’s seat and pulls back on the strap with all of his weight, and although Brandon might be able to break six tackles and hit a hole like a Mack truck, he will never make it out of that seat.
He does manage to backhand Libby and get a little of her blood on his knuckle. Blood from the already split lip she sustained when Dennis socked her the previous night.
When Dennis is convinced that Brandon has been benched—permanently—he lets go of the seatbelt, then uses it to strop the blade clean of blood before clasping it closed.
He reaches into the front seat and grabs Libby by the hair, pulling it hard. He slaps her hard across the face, with his leather-laden fingers, and then opens her mouth by gripping her chin with his thumb and forefingers. He kisses her passionately, then spits a hocker into her mouth, and slaps her again.
He can taste the copper sting of her blood in his kiss, mixed with the salty dose the nigger had given her.
Dennis pulls her back across the console and opens his zipper deftly with his free hand. He jams his throbbing—but dwarfed in comparison to Brandon’s—cock into her mouth and makes her finish him too.
“Did you like that, you fucking slut?”
She says she did, which was the answer he wanted to hear, so he lets her hair go and tells her to get out. They casually walk back to hail a cab.
Coffee
The phone rings loudly enough to startle Carron, who has been waiting for the call some two days. Jeff Parker, his friend.
“I’m gonna need you to haul this Dennis guy in. Looks like we got a match.” Jeff says.
“I’m not surprised. You got a warrant?”
“I do. It’s time to pick him up.”
“Well, that might be more challenging than I’d hoped.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning . . . I hauled the scumbag in last night, got a little rough with him, according to my captain’s standards, and had to let him go.”
“Why the fuck—”
“I wanted to agitate him . . . get him to make a mistake. I knew he was dirty before you ever mentioned my niece. He fit the profile. So, I hauled him, stuffed him in the booth with no air, and me and my partner took turns ruffling his feathers up a bit, hoping he’d squawk. Then the guy’s lawyer shows up just in time to put the kibosh on the whole thing, which was fine. I’d only planned to get him steamed and then pin a tail on the guy, which I did, but he shook the tail in less than an hour.”
“Last seen?”
“Headed to Old Town . . . Scottsdale.”
“I know where Old Town is, Carron, what do you mean he fits the profile?”
“I mean, I know killers, and this guy likes to kill. . . . He was fucking toying with me last night; I could feel it. He knew he had the upper hand and he ran with it. Nothing I could do would rattle this kid’s cage.”
“We have an unsolved from the same day your niece was taken. College couple beaten to death in their apartment. No murder weapon, no prints. Skulls caved in, broken everything; just ruined. They were getting it on and someone came in the front door and pummeled ‘em. I haven’t seen anything like it before. It was disgusting; girl was a real looker too. Anyways, the couple had hooked up a mile down the road at a dive bar; bartender says the boyfriend got into it with a guy f
or eyeball fucking his girl, the looker, and that the guy was creepy anyway. Sitting alone, with scratches on his face, mumbling to himself half the night. Paid everything in cash.”
“Yeah that’s the guy: he’s in your town, and you gotta track him down, Jeff. I just emailed you his picture. I checked with the hotels and motels in your area, over the phone, but you need to put eyes out there, get a better feel than I can. I’m driving up today. I have no idea where to look, but I am finding this fucking creep today.”
“I’ll take Foster’s mug shot around to the bartender and some of the hotel managers. See if they come up with anything. They are required to keep a photo ID on file, but that doesn’t mean it gets done. Maybe I can jog some memories.
“Carron, you have my word. We will not stop until we catch this guy. Stand on me.”
Carron hangs up gently and sorts through the pile of minutia on his desk. Amongst the flotsam, he comes to a worn manila envelope. The envelope is heavy and plain. There are no addresses or mailing labels, just black lettering, made with a felt-tipped marker, which forms the words “STALEY’S EYES ONLY,” in all capitals. Feeling the rigid metal inside the thin sheath, he knows what he will find when he tears it open.
Her tags will expire soon. T8RTOT, they read.
“Son of a bitch,” he says without emotion, while he soaks in the realization. He knows he is being toyed with now. He thinks back to the apartment he left in such a hurry. The journal, left out on the bed; he had thrown it helter-skelter onto the mattress and left it wide open. Open to one of the many pages of Harold Dean clippings.
“Fuck!” he shouts now, into the bullpen full of dicks trying to hunt down their own leads. And Eleman, who’s been silently beside him waiting to hear from his mentor what’s next, gets up to follow Staley, but Carron tells him to stay behind with a rigid outstretched palm.
“This is personal,” he says.
And when that doesn’t deter Rodriguez, he tells him he needs to talk to someone alone, and he dials Abigail Carter, as he steps into the elevator.
He and Abbie used to be partners in the Bureau. She was his closest confidant. She even stood by him after the incident that got him blacklisted and squeezed out. Though she stood by him, he could never look at her the same. His guilt and self-loathing transferred to her. He could never open up the same, and trust her the same. He shut down on all fronts, following his release from the FBI, closing off his borders like a continent at war. She could only bear so much before she had to excise him from her life.